


The Sentinel

by flyingblackhawk



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Natasha Romanov deserved better, Natasha Whump, sort of canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-24 19:14:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20019625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingblackhawk/pseuds/flyingblackhawk
Summary: After the events of Infinity War, a fractured team leave the facility one by one, until there is only one person left behind.AO3 repost requested anonymously on Tumblr





	The Sentinel

After Tony has recovered enough to know where he is, he talks with Pepper. Natasha doesn’t hear what is said, but it’s easy enough to guess that Tony is done, done with the Avengers, done with all of it. Pepper helps him out to the car, and Natasha stands and watches. Witnesses. There’s nothing else she can do.

“Look after the place,” Tony says, as he passes her. She just nods. Pepper kisses her on the cheek, and she watches as they drive away from the facility.

Three days later, Rocket says his goodbyes and boards the Guardians’ ship with Nebula. They aren’t used to this world, and staying here on the planet where their friends died can’t be a fun prospect. Natasha understands. She goes out with the others to wave them off, and to watch the spectacle of the ship rocketing up through the atmosphere until it is out of sight.

Conversations are thin on the ground when Carol announces she’s leaving, and Natasha almost wants to ask her to stay. It’d be nice having another woman around the place, but Carol is a superhero, and superheroes have places to be, things to do. It’s been a week since Rocket and Nebula left, and they haven’t heard from them.

“I’ll call when I can,” Carol promises, and hugs her. They’ve never hugged before, but it feels appropriate. Who knows where they’ll be the next time they’re in contact range? Natasha feels another piece of her life slip away as Carol follows the same path as the ship. She’ll call when she can, Natasha repeats to herself. Steve squeezes her shoulder, and Natasha clasps his hand. Everything is falling away, even now, even after the battle is done.

Two weeks after that, Thor leaves quietly in the night. They don’t realise he’s gone until Bruce goes to check on him and finds a note. It’s not much, just a few lines saying he’s leaving to be with his people. It’s not personal, Natasha knows. He’s got better things to do than to hang around with what’s left of the Avengers. This is their new reality, and they have to make do with what they have. Half of the Asgardians might still be alive, and Thor is their leader. He had to go. She wonders if he really had to go without saying goodbye.

It stings a little more when Rhodey departs in their second month together, mostly because he doesn’t really have to. The facility has all the tech he needs to pick up the pieces of the military, but he’s always been a boots on the ground man and he doesn’t like directing from behind the scenes. There are only so many high ranking officials left, and he’s one of them. He tells her all this while she tries not to let her emotions show. They’re drinking, as they so often are, by the big windows overlooking the lake. The others are around somewhere, milling in the quiet space of the empty complex.

“They need me,” Rhodey says, and she nods.

“You get them in line,” she tells him. “Then you can come back.”

“I’ll be back,” he promises. It’s empty, she knows it. No one wants to be here anymore, in the hub of everything that failed. The home of the team that is no longer here.

It’s a few days before she realises that it’s only the three of them. Bruce is here and there, mostly pottering, trying to distract himself. Steve is reaching out to SHIELD contacts, trying fruitlessly to plan, to network, to do his job. Natasha spends a week tracking Clint down. She went to the farm, in the very first days after the Decimation. She found the ashes, still lying where they had fallen. She found the tossed house, and knew he was alive straight away. His cell and broken ankle monitor were in the master bedroom, and she lay there for a long while, on his bed, wondering how the world had come to this. There was no note. Maybe he thought she was dead. She left one for him anyway, left it on the kitchen table where she had eaten breakfast with his family so many times. All gone now. All gone to dust.

Six months after the end, Bruce announces his plan to leave. Natasha feels that same heavy feeling in her chest, the same feeling as when Rhodey left, the same feeling she gets every time she sees a picture of what Clint’s doing all around the world.

“I’m sorry, Nat,” Bruce says, even though she hasn’t said anything. She doesn’t have to, and she can’t hide her sadness anymore. She’s tired, and there’s no one left but Steve to be strong for. But he’s an old hand when it comes to tragedy, and he’s moving on faster than she can keep up with.

“You do what you have to,” she says, taking his hands. “Whatever you need. Then you can come back.”

He nods. “I will.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

Bullshit, she wants to say, of course you won’t come back. Who would want to be here? Why would everyone have left if this was a good place, a place where they could hold on to what little they have left? But she can’t ask him to stay when he doesn’t want to, so she helps him pack, gets him a car, and sees him off on his way. Later, Steve offers her a hug, and she takes it gratefully. There’s no one to hide her weakness from anymore. It’s just the two of them, and the big, empty facility.

For a while, it seems like it could work. They get up, train together, run around the lake path sometimes. They work together, setting up the new networks, consolidating the contacts they have left. A system emerges, and the rhythm lasts for months. It’s been a year and a half since the Decimation when Natasha sits down to breakfast one morning, and Steve, across the table from her, looks up nervously.

“I’m going to head back to Brooklyn in a couple of days,” he says. Natasha’s hand tightens on her spoon. She stares at her cereal.

“Just for a few days,” he says. “You’ll be okay on your own, right?”

She is embarrassed by her own relief.

“Yeah,” she says. “Of course, I’ll be fine.”

He goes, and for the first time in eighteen months, Natasha is alone. Of course, she’s spent most of the past year and a half alone anyway, but there have always been others around. Now she’s entirely alone in the facility, free to drift around like a ghost. She remembers when Tony finished the rebuild here, how they came to see it, how it felt for the first time in her life to have a real team, and some semblance of a family. Now she’s alone. Perhaps this is how it should be.

Steve comes back after three days. They fall back into their routine. It’s comfortable, and Natasha is grateful that Steve, at least, hasn’t left her.

“I’ll be in the city next week,” he says, the next month. “I’m helping to set up a few support groups with the VA.”

“Great,” she says. “I’ll miss you, though.”

She does. It’s a long week, though she fills it up with emails from Rocket, a call from Carol, checkins on Rhodey and Thor, and a fresh report on some horrific activity she’s pretty sure is Clint rampaging in Cairo.

Natasha has a knack for reading people, and she realises what Steve is going to say before he says it. They are nearing the two year mark of this new life, this life that Natasha is struggling not to call an afterlife. She knows Steve has built new things for himself, new relationships, and he has a new purpose. So she knows what he’s going to say, and she holds up a hand to stop him.

“It’s okay, Steve,” she says. “Brooklyn is your home. The city, that’s… it’s your home. You don’t have to explain yourself.”

“I’ll visit all the time,” he says. He’s not terrible at reading people either, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Natasha, faced with a life alone in the facility, is scared.

“You’d better,” she smiles, forcing it, pretending that this is okay. It’s not, of course, but she doesn’t need to burden Steve with the fact that she needs him, that he’s the last person standing between her and absolute solitude.

He packs up and leaves within the week, and then there is just silence. There are parts of it that are nice. She doesn’t have to worry about crying in the common areas. She can cook whatever she wants, and she can get up at all hours of the night without worrying anyone. And there are parts of it that are bad, like the crushing loneliness, like the feeling of failure, like the lack of arms around her when she needs them the most.

Some of them visit, of course. Steve comes when he can, although after the third year she barely sees him. She reminds him of the past, she knows, and he doesn’t want to live in those memories anymore. Rhodey comes in and out when he’s in the country. She gets calls from Bruce, and her reliable emails from Rocket and Nebula. Carol drops by once in person, and on the video conferences when she can. Natasha remains, as she always does, and fills her days with her work, keeping the place going, being a constant source of information and support for her friends who are out there in the universe.

It’s something of a surprise when Tony checks in on her. He doesn’t come to the facility, but she’s invited out to a house she didn’t know existed, and when she gets there, she meets a two-year-old named Morgan and comes face to face with a Tony Stark she didn’t know could exist - a happy, fulfilled Tony Stark, married to Pepper, father to a beautiful baby girl.

Natasha’s heart is full for him, before it breaks for herself on the way back to the facility. Alone again, at the wheel of a black sedan, she cries her heart out. The steering wheel is marked by her fingernails and when she finally gets out of the car, her shirt is wet from her own tears. She goes inside, straight to the comms hub, and works through the night. She reorganises her file on Clint. She cleans up the office. She drinks too much coffee.

As the sun comes up, Natasha’s eyes are burning and her hands are shaking. This is her life now, alone in the facility. She sets her jaw, and goes about her duties. She will carry on.

There’s nothing else she can do.


End file.
